


the love that is

by yellingsounds



Category: Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: College Student Peter Parker, Friendship, Love, M/M, Valentine's Day, Valentines, just kidding I've never seen the bachelor, normalize giving your adult friends valentines, the rose ceremony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29395119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellingsounds/pseuds/yellingsounds
Summary: “At what point did it become socially unacceptable to give out valentines?” Foggy asks. His hair rustles against the fabric of his shirt as he straightens his collar. “I mean, you got valentines as a kid, right?”Matt thinks of pancakes for dinner and fancy maple syrup, of fresh-baked cookies and sticky-sweet frosting.“Sort of,” he says....Valentine's Day, through the years.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jack" Murdock/Margaret Murdock, Margaret Murdock & Matt Murdock, Matt Murdock & Karen Page, Matt Murdock & Peter Parker, Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 71
Collections: Team Red Server Valentine's Day Pop





	the love that is

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to G0thVen0m for the amazing artwork!

It is February 14th. Matt’s father buys a single red rose from a street vendor as they walk home from the gym. 

Matt asks him why, like he does every year, and his father says “I don’t know,” like he does every year, and Matt knows he is lying, like he does every year.

When they get home, Matt carefully fills a glass with water and places the rose inside. He holds it at eye level, inspecting the petals and the stem and the sharp thorns.

“Matty,” Dad reminds him, gesturing to the fridge with his spatula.

Matt sets the glass on the windowsill and retrieves the large bowl of pancake batter out of the fridge. Dad must have mixed it this morning, while Matt was still asleep.

“Don’t burn them again,” Matt says, even though it was really his fault that they turned out charred last time.

Dad scoops up some batter and plops it on the sizzling pan, then holds out the spatula. “ _ I  _ won’t.’

Matt takes it and watches the pancake intently, waiting for the bubbles to pop.

His father likes Valentine’s Day. Matt doesn’t really understand why--Dad’s a grown up, so he doesn’t get to go to school and fill his backpack with candy and paper hearts. He can’t do any of the things grown-ups do today, either, like go on dates or buy each other huge teddy bears, because he doesn’t have anyone to buy a huge teddy bear for.

The pancake is starting to smoke a little.

Matt flips it, quickly. The edges are a little dark, but the rest of it looks okay. 

“Seven out of ten,” Dad says, and adds two more piles of batter to the pan.

“Hey!” argues Matt. “It’s not done yet.”

He keeps his eye trained on the pancakes, determined to make them perfect, while his father sets the table.

“Okay,” his dad says, after Matt announces that he’s done. The first pancake got even more burnt on the other side, and the second is undercooked in the middle, but Matt thinks the third looks pretty good. “You’re ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Pancake battle.”

Dad piles more batter on the pan and picks up another spatula.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Set.”

“Go,” they say in unison.

“Murdock’s in the lead,” his father narrates, flipping his pancakes without even looking at them. “But looks like junior is gaining on him.”

Matt carefully slides the spatula under each of his pancakes and turns them over. One of them slides across the pan and ends up smushed against the side of the skillet.

“Hmm,” his father says, inspecting the two plates after they’re done. “Looks like a draw.”

“Giant crazy pancake?” Matt asks.

“Giant crazy pancake.”

Matt takes all the candy out of his backpack while his father pours the rest of the batter in the pan.

After he’s done pouring skittles and gummy hearts and little chocolate kisses into a bowl, Matt runs over to the stove and starts tossing everything in.

It tastes horrible, per usual. Dad says he’ll bring it to the gym tomorrow. 

“Why would you buy a rose?” Matt asks, once they’re sitting at the table, cutting into stacks of golden brown goodness. He covers his pile with the good maple syrup, the kind that comes in a little glass pitcher.

“Matty, I already told you--”

“No, I mean--it’s gonna die,” Matt says, looking over at the windowsill. The rose is already looking kind of droopy. “What’s the point?”

Dad brings it over to the table.

“Look at that,” he says, pointing at the petals. “It’s beautiful.”

Matt doesn’t really understand what’s so great about a regular old rose, but he nods anyway.

“It’s worth it to spend a little time with something beautiful,” his father tells him, “even if it doesn’t last.”

…

It is February 14th. Matt does not need a calendar to know this.

The scent of cheap candy and expensive wine, of cheap wine and expensive candy, clouds the air until Matt can barely breathe. He hears couples kissing and couples fighting and lonely people crying, smells pen ink and breakfast in bed and the pungent uptick of business for every florist in the city.

He doesn’t understand it, not yet, but the day is overwhelming. It’s suffocating. 

Then the snow starts, and things quiet, just a little.

His dad comes home smelling of sweat and flowers and the good maple syrup, the kind that comes in a little glass pitcher.

This is the first year Matt cannot see the rose.

It is the last year his father will bring it home.

…

It is February 14th. Matt kicked another boy in the shins yesterday, and has been suspended from today’s trip to the park.

Instead, he has to help out in the kitchen. He can smell the batch of cookies already in the oven. They’ll be done soon--sooner than the timer set. He briefly considers not saying anything and letting them burn, but that’s a vindictive thought. A confession thought. 

He’s attacking a lump of sugary, vanilla-scented dough when Sister Maggie hands him something cold and sharp. It’s a thin strip of metal, contorted into the shape of a heart.

“Isn’t this a pagan holiday?” asks Matt.

“Isn’t every holiday a pagan holiday?” asks Sister Maggie.

Matt thinks, not for the first time, that Sister Maggie is quite an unusual nun.

“People celebrate love on Valentine’s Day,” Matt says, pressing the cookie cutter into the dough. He carefully picks up the cookie, careful not to break the heart, and places it on the pan Maggie has prepared. The parchment paper crinkles. “But you’re a nun. You’re not allowed.”

The Sister is silent for a moment. Matt can hear the soft sound of powdered sugar hitting the counter as she dips a measuring cup into the bag, the harsh noise of metal scraping metal as she whisks something so disgustingly sweet that it must be icing.

“There are different kinds of love,” she says, finally. 

Matt doesn’t eat pancakes for dinner that night. But he eats soft, frosting covered sugar cookies for dessert, and he thinks maybe that’s the same thing. 

…

It is February 14th. Foggy has spent the day handing out valentines to all his classmates, like they’re kindergarteners instead of second year law students. 

Matt doesn’t get his until they’re back in their dorm at the end of the day. Foggy is getting reading to go to dinner with Marci. Matt is getting ready to go to dinner with no one.

“At what point did it become socially unacceptable to give out valentines?” Foggy asks. His hair rustles against the fabric of his shirt as he straightens his collar. “I mean, you got valentines as a kid, right?”

Matt thinks of pancakes for dinner and fancy maple syrup, of fresh-baked cookies and sticky-sweet frosting.

“Sort of,” he says. 

“They make people feel loved,” grumbles Foggy. “Just because we’re adults doesn’t mean we can’t share some nice, platonic love. I got a lot of love to give, Matt!”

“People make fun of you, Fogs?” 

“Only a little,” Foggy admits. “Hey, I have something for you.”

A drawer opening. Footsteps, cologne getting stronger. He hands him something round and impossibly soft.

“I figured a paper one would be lost on you,” Foggy says. He sounds nervous. “Mich down the hall crochets, so I asked him to make--”

“An avocado,” Matt says, running his hands over the thick yarn. 

Foggy’s heart relaxes. “Yeah.”

His phone beeps. “Shit, I gotta go.”

“Have fun with, uh.” Foggy peers over Matt’s shoulder at his textbook, then laughs a little, probably realizing he can’t read it. “Whatever that is.”

“Ethics,” says Matt.

“Ethics,” Foggy repeats, and then the footsteps are back and the door shuts and Matt is alone.

He squeezes the avocado. Something small and hard juts out. The avocado, he realizes, is holding a tiny plastic heart. 

…

It is February 14th. Daredevil stops three muggers and busts a bank robbery. 

The Spider tries to get his attention. He ignores it.

His friends aren’t speaking to him, or maybe he isn’t speaking to his friends. 

It is the same as any other day.

Until he wakes up in a small, unfamiliar room. It’s crowded with furniture and clothes, smells like cheap beer and mold.

There’s a heartbeat--impossibly fast, impossibly loud. 

“Why am I in a dorm room?” he asks the Spider, trying to sit up. His shoulder is burning; he carefully pokes at it, finding blood-soaked bandages.

Oh. That’s why.

“It isn’t mine,” says Spider-Man. He’s lying. “It belongs to a friend of mine. I didn’t want to bring you to my apartment, for, you know, security reasons.”

“So you brought me to a college campus filled with civilians.”

“They’ve seen weirder.” 

“Not what I meant.”

“Anyway,” Spider-Man says. “I was following you--not in a creepy way--so I saw the tail-end of that fight. Bullet only grazed you, but you hit your head pretty hard. Managed to take the guy out before you went unconscious, though.”

“I’m glad it was entertaining,” Matt says, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

“I have your phone,” the Spider says suddenly.

“Keep it.” 

“I figured you might have someone I could call, let them know you’re okay,” he says slowly, “but there were no contacts on it. No recent calls, either.”

Matt shrugs. “Makes a good paper-weight.”

“It’s good to have people in your corner, is all.”

“Yeah? Like you do?”

It’s not a nice thing to say. Matt suspects, based on the few interactions he’s had with him, that Spider-Man’s corner is nonexistent. 

“I have super healing.”

“How do you know I don’t?” 

“Because you bled all over my comforter,” Spider-Man says, and there’s no sharp intake of breath, no quickening heart, no heat on his cheeks. It wasn’t an accident, what he said.

He’s trusting Matt.

Matt sits back down. “Why were you following me?”

“Okay, this might sound stupid.” There’s a rustling sound. “But in my opinion, we should all lighten up and take advantage of society’s excessive culture of consumerism on this fine winter day.” 

“What?”

The Spider holds something out. It smells like glue. “I started giving all my vigilante friends valentines,” he explains. “And by friends, I mean anyone who I can flag down. I thought Frank Castle was gonna kill me, but it turns out he really likes Nerds.”

Matt didn’t even realize that was today. He takes the paper and tries his best to look like he’s reading it. It’s covered in glitter, which means he can’t make anything out with his hands.

“You made this?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Spider-Man says. “I’m crafty. Arachnid of many talents.” 

This kid, whom Matt has been nothing but dismissive toward. This kid, who spends his nights swinging around the city and his days on this campus, spent time on this, for someone he barely knows. 

“Give me the phone,” Matt decides, rubbing the edge of the paper between the pads of his fingers. “I have his number memorized.”

“‘Let’s team up,’” Foggy reads, later, when everything’s okay again. “‘Love, Spider-Man.’ Under that he’s drawn a little picture of you, then a plus sign, then a picture of him, then an equals sign, and then...a pair of criminals, I think? They’re tied up.”

He puts the valentine down and drums his fingers against his desk. “Are you going to work with him?” 

“Yeah,” Matt says. “I think I will.” 

…

It is February 14th. Matt is juicing a beet in the Clinton Church kitchen.

“You know,” Foggy says, measuring out the powdered sugar, “You could just use food coloring, like a normal person.”

“This is food coloring,” says Matt. “As nature intended it. Do you know what that synthetic shit does to your brain?”

Foggy laughs. “I can stand to lose a few brain cells.”

Matt puts the beet aside and pours the juice into Foggy’s bowl, then takes over whisking so Foggy can take the cookies out of the oven. There’s a puff of hot air and the sound of metal clattering and the quiet thumping of Foggy’s heart being nervous.

“Uh,” he says.

Matt picks up one of the cookies. It feels wrong. It smells wrong. It tastes wrong.

“I’ll just go buy a mix,” Foggy says.

“Murdocks don’t quit,” Matt tells him. “ _ Nelsons _ don’t quit.”

“They do, actually. Family of quitters, we are.”

Matt dips a spoon into the frosting. It makes a wet, squelching sound. A bad sound. A  _ wrong _ sound. “But sometimes, we have to ask for help.”

“We’re finding your mom so she can help us make these cookies,” Foggy says.

“Yes.”

“The cookies that we’re making. So that she doesn’t have to make them.”

“New gift,” offers Matt. “Mother-son bonding experience.”

“What am I, then?”

“Son-in-law,” he says, without really meaning to. 

Foggy is silent for an agonizingly long moment, then asks, “Tax purposes?”

“Spousal Privilege.” 

“Can’t say I haven’t thought about it.”

Matt doesn’t know if it’s true. He’s trying not to listen to Foggy’s heart as much; he knows he finds it invasive.

It’s probably a joke.

“Oh, Matthew,” Sister Maggie says, once they all get back to the kitchen. “Why on earth is there a beet here? Did you bring that yourself?”

“The beet is not the problem,” Matt argues.

“It’s part of the problem,” Foggy says. “But I honestly don’t know what happened.”

The parchment paper crinkles.

“Oh, that’s awful,” says the Sister, chewing. “It’s somehow undercooked and burnt at the same time. Did you follow the recipe?”

“Yes,” Matt says, dryly. “I read it with my eyes.”

“I tried to stick to it,” Foggy says pointedly, “But Matt kept adding things until he thought the dough ‘smelled right.’”

Matt’s senses are great for cooking. He’s beginning to suspect they don’t translate so well to baking. 

“Enough of the blame game,” Maggie says, taking out the ingredients they just put away. “It’s time for a baking lesson.”

They’ve barely started when Foggy’s phone beeps. “Karen’s here,’ he says, after a moment. “I’m gonna go show her where we are.”

They don’t talk much, once he’s gone. Maggie tells Matt what to do, and he does it, and he doesn’t try to add extra flour or hide the vanilla extract.

Foggy is taking a suspiciously long time. Matt is beginning to think he might have ulterior motives, leaving them alone like this.

Matt’s not angry at her, not anymore. But there’s this pain in his chest when he’s around her, when he hears her voice and thinks “that’s the Sister” before he thinks “that’s my mother,” when he remembers being eleven and having no one and feeling so, so alone. 

“You loved my father,” Matt says, once the dough is rolled out. You didn’t love me, he doesn’t say.

He thinks she hears it anyways. 

“I care about you very much,” she says, “and I--I wish--”

“He used to buy you a rose,” Matt interrupts. It’s not a question.

Maggie sighs. “Jack loved Valentine’s Day. I think he felt it was a day he was allowed to show his emotions.” 

“I think of that rose, when I think of love,” Matt says.

She told him, once, that there are different kinds of love. And it’s true, he thinks: there is the love that is pancakes and there is the love that is sugar cookies and there is the love that is soft yarn and there is the love that is glitter glue. 

This, though, is a very specific kind of love.

“I’m going to the florist, after this,” he tells her. He hadn’t solidified the plan in his brain until just now, but now that he’s said it, now that the words are out there, lingering in the air, he has to follow through.

“He’s a nice boy, Franklin.” says Maggie. “You should bring him around more often. And Matthew--”

“I can’t do this,” Matt says. “Not today.” He picks up the beet, tosses it back and forth between his hands. “Another time, we can talk.”

The door opens.

“Matthew Murdock,” Foggy instructs. “Put down the beet.”

“There are research studies,” Matt starts, but he puts it down anyway.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” says Karen, who smells like gunpowder and mass murderer. 

“Guess what I found at the store?” She sets down a large box, reaches inside, and hands him a small square of cardstock. “It says ‘dare to be my valentine?’ with a little cartoon of your mask.”

And there is the love that is store-bought valentines with tiny lollipops attached. 

“Give me another,” Matt says. He’ll give it to Peter, next time they run into each other. “Thanks, Karen.” 

“I got a box for you, too,” she tells the Sister, who seems absolutely delighted.

“The Church took the Feast of St. Valentine off the calendar in 1969,” says Matt.

“Beam in thine eye, Matthew.” Maggie says. “The kids will love these.”

After the cookies are done and frosted and everyone is getting ready to leave, Sister Maggie tucks a thick, bumpy sheet of paper under his arm.

It’s the cookie recipe, printed in braille.

“I forget to give it to you earlier,” she says. “So it was really my fault. I’m sorry.”

“I put three tablespoons of baking soda in there. Not all your fault,” Matt says. “And I know.”

There’s a line out the door at the florist. Once it’s finally his turn at the counter, Matt says, “I’d like to buy a rose.” 

“You and everyone else,” says the florist. “What color?”

Their heartbeat stutters. “Or--can you--”

He smiles at them. “I remember colors. What’s the ugliest one you have?”

”You know, I hear that more often than I should,” they say, opening the case. “Trying to break up with someone?”

“The opposite, actually.” 

The florist hands him a bundle of crepe paper and starts tapping away at the cash register. “Good luck, I guess.’

“Oh, he has terrible taste.” Matt tells them. “He’ll love it.”

“That rose is orange,” Foggy says, when he opens his apartment door. “Like, the most neon, obnoxious orange you could imagine.”

“I know,” Matt says. “The florist said it’s worse than my hair.”

It’s tinted, with artificial dye. It smells terrible, but no one’s eating it. 

“Is this a friend rose?” Foggy asks. “Or a...more than a friend rose? ‘Cause I’d like to think I’m pretty good at picking up signals but you’re usually more forward than this.”

“Both,” Matt says. “Either. Whichever one you want it to be.”

Because that’s just it: All that matters is that Foggy’s in his life, whatever way he’s in it. 

He loves him, and he thinks of a rose. But he loves him and thinks of a crochet valentine, too. 

“I like both,” Foggy says, and takes the rose with one hand and Matt’s hand with the other. 

He presses Matt’s palm against his chest, right where his heart beats steadily.

“I like both,” he repeats.

It’s not a lie, but Matt didn’t need to feel his heart to know that. He can hear the truth in his voice.

It mirrors his own. 

  
  



End file.
